The ABC has published details of hundreds of top-secret Cabinet documents that were left in pieces of ex-government furniture. The Cabinet Files, which the broadcaster published in part yesterday, were given to the ABC after an unnamed person bought two old filing cabinets from a second-hand shop in Canberra and drilled the locks. The documents stored within detailed the Australian Federal Police losing other highly classified documents, Scott Morrison’s efforts to slow down asylum seeker visa applications while he was immigration minister, former prime minister Kevin Rudd ignoring warnings of “critical risks” associated with the 2009 home insulation scheme, and a recommendation by then-attorney-general Philip Ruddock that the right to silence be removed during terrorism interrogations. Read the files here.

NSW Greens politician David Shoebridge has hit out at Bob Brown, the federal party’s founder, over comments Brown made in response to an article in The Saturday Paper in which an anonymous member of the ACT Greens alleged the party mishandled her sexual assault by another member. In a letter reacting to the December 23 piece, Brown said “inexplicably, your adult, articulate and anonymous correspondent” did not report her assault to police “for many months”, saying the ACT Greens “should not have been expected to substitute for the criminal justice system”. Writing on Facebook, Shoebridge said Brown’s comments showed “appalling disrespect to a victim of sexual abuse” and that the assault victim “deserved so much more” from the party.

Former New South Wales premier Kristina Keneally has been endorsed to replace Sam Dastyari’s vacant Senate seat. A meeting of Labor factions yesterday formally endorsed Keneally, who was widely expected to return to politics after running as Labor’s candidate in the Bennelong byelection in December. Keneally said she would use her Senate position to promote stillbirth research funding and constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians. Keneally will likely take her seat sometime this month.

And United States President Donald Trump has given his first annual State of the Union address in Washington, DC. Focusing on the strong US economy, immigration and criminal gangs, Trump said “there has never been a better time to start living the American dream”. The address was overshadowed before it began by the abrupt resignation of deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe after repeated public criticisms from Trump, along with a typo in the official invitations sent to attendees. First Lady Melania Trump made her first public appearance since The Wall Street Journalreported that a Trump lawyer arranged a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in return for her silence about a sexual encounter with Mr Trump in 2006.

“The story of this road, the BR-163, is in many ways the story of Brazil’s relationship with the rainforest ... As it snakes north, it cuts a path not only through the country itself, but through Brazil’s conflicting ambitions: to transform itself into a first-world economy, on the one hand, and on the other, to protect and preserve what is left of an ecosystem that recycles a fifth of the world’s rainfall, holds 150 million tonnes of stored carbon, and is home to 15 per cent of all the species on Earth.” the globe and mail

“Anti-natalists are adherents of the philosophy that human beings are a destructive force to animals and to the earth, and therefore it’s morally wrong to create more of them ... Because they’ve already adopted plant-based diets that reduce their carbon footprints, some vegans say it’s incongruous, even hypocritical, to produce children that will help deplete the earth’s resources.” marie claire

“In 16 years, the United States has spent billions of dollars fighting a war that has killed thousands of soldiers and an untold number of civilians in a country that Washington considers insignificant to its strategic interests in the region. Meanwhile, the country it has viewed as a linchpin, Pakistan – a nuclear-armed cauldron of volatile politics and long America’s closest military ally in South Asia – has pursued a covert campaign in Afghanistan designed to ensure that the money and the lives have been spent in vain.” the atlantic

“Uber has urged users in New South Wales to complain to the state’s transport minister about the introduction of a $1 tax on the company which comes into force on Thursday and is likely to be passed on to customers. The tax applies to each trip taken in taxis, hire cars and ride-sharing services such as Uber across most of the state, and will go towards a $250 million compensation package for the taxi industry.” guardian australia

“Three in four food delivery riders surveyed in Sydney and Melbourne said they were paid below the minimum wage, prompting a national campaign for regulation of the on-demand economy. The Transport Workers Union survey found many riders were underpaid, had been injured on the job without insurance cover or sick pay and had worked more than 40 hours a week.” fairfax

“The International Cricket Council’s Anti-Corruption Unit has launched an investigation into a private league match in the UAE, with former England captain Michael Vaughan describing a number of the comical dismissals as ‘unbelievable’ ... Footage shows some batsman foolishly advancing to spinners and being stumped without even bothering to try to get back in their crease, and ridiculous run outs with some batsmen setting off for suicidal singles and not looking like trying to make their ground.” wide world of sports

Mike Seccombe
After two High Court decisions, the fight against federal funding for religious-only school chaplains is set to end with a test case on state anti-discrimination law.You can’t pay someone to break the law, which is what the Victorian government is now doing. And they can’t say, ‘Well, the federal government is paying us to break the law.’

Kate Iselin
The Victorian Liberal Party’s state council has, ahead of this year’s election, endorsed the ‘Nordic model’ to transform sex work laws, but European experiences suggest it can have devastating consequences for workers.

Rebecca Harkins-Cross
She’s a writer whose plays have been widely lauded by critics but largely neglected by the mainstream. Now Patricia Cornelius’s work will take its place on the main stage. “It sounds so hifalutin, but my ambition was really just to be able to create great work … that I felt soared. It never entered my mind that it would happen in the mainstream.”

Annie Smithers
I came across this recipe some years ago and it has become my favourite to move on to once I’m over the ‘sweet’ quince thing. It features Persian overtones, Moroccan influences and rich flavours that are perfect as the nights get colder.

Guy Rundle
The massive expansion of the tertiary sector during the Dawkins era, and the elision of tech institutes and universities, set us off on the wild ride we are still on. Resistance by the humanities was greeted with exemplary punishment – the cheapest courses to teach, they were crowded with tens of thousands of new students and deprived of the funding to cater for them. The problem is worse in Australia than almost anywhere else. Had we a real respect for universities and what they do, the successive depredation of them would have given us a May ’68 redux by now. Instead, the machine hums on.

Paul Bongiorno
The fact is Labor senator Katy Gallagher referred herself to the High Court as a test case for “reasonable steps”. Turnbull’s attack on Shorten for gaming the system is very rich given he argued that Barnaby Joyce was eligible until the court declared otherwise. Joyce remained deputy prime minister and sat in the parliament for 74 days even though he was under a cloud. There is no real substance to the demands that the members now facing the voters again should apologise for the inconvenience and expense the byelections will cost. In all their cases, their good faith is established by their genuine efforts to comply with section 44, according to serious legal advice, which was clearly not the case with the politicians who were bundled out of the parliament last year.

Richard Ackland
This week Gadfly thinks it’s high time to unload some festering snipes and snarls. Take the Australian Press Council as a starting point. The press “regulator” is in the process of rissoling the Indigenous woman Carla McGrath as a public member of the council, on the feeble excuse that her position as deputy chair of GetUp! creates a conflict of interest. What on earth are they on about? The Press Council itself is a conflict of interest, riddled with tired hacks representing their paymasters in the media.

Even the farmers admit it is an increment – the decision by Malcolm Turnbull’s government not to ban live exports over summer, despite evidence of the risk to animals, despite footage of mass deaths and calls from vets to end the trade.The truth is, this is an industry of undue political clout. There are economic arguments against live exports, good ones. There are obvious welfare arguments, too.

Martin McKenzie-Murray
Though the unusual manner in which Aaron Cockman spoke of the alleged murderer of his children and ex-wife – his former father-in-law – was puzzling to many, psychological studies of similar crimes suggest a way to make sense of its seeming contradictions.